Conventional network communications may involve data plane and control plane communications. The control plane typically involves communications that inform how devices should operate, such as how data plane communications should be handled. Various control plane protocols exist for communicating control plane information within networks.
An Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) protocol has been developed to interconnect separate Layer 2 networks over a Layer 3 core. The OTV protocol uses a “MAC-in-Internet Protocol (IP)” encapsulation technique to communicate Layer 2 data plane messages over an IP network. While existing devices in a Layer 2 network can learn about remote device reachability in the data plane, conventional techniques may create scalability problems.
Furthermore, conversational MAC learning methods have been developed whereby devices within the same network may learn only the MAC addresses for interested devices, rather than all MAC addresses in the domain. Using such techniques, each interface learns only those MAC addresses that are actively speaking with the interface.